Wardsend Cemetery
The ‘friends of’
group are proactive and friendly. They treated Art in the Park to an impromptu
tour, for which we are very grateful. To hear the stories
they told along the way, click the sound cloud links below. (uploading in progress - watch this space!).
Peter Quincey (left) and George Proctor of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery
Bugler Boy
Boy at the last trumpet call
For the charge of the light brigade
Held a golden bugle to his lips
Sounding a valiant death.
Mascot Jim. With you we win.
He sent them to the guns.
He sent them to a Times editorial.
He sent them to Tennyson’s pen
That they should live.
He lies betrayed in a grave.
Mascot Jim. With you we win.
They promised to keep him safe.
I am drawn to his youth,
His brave vulnerability
And the irony of his resting place
In a disused Wardsend cemetery.
Mascot Jim. With you we win.
They promised to keep him safe,
But even his stone is toppled.
He was a chosen one,
Mascot of warriors,
Wide-eyed and ruddy-cheeked
Puffing wind like a renaissance cherub
Clad in red with a black box round his head.
Ian Enters
Art in the Park Photography walk through Wardsend Cemtery, led by Charlotte Newton
Wards End Cemetery
How we heaped the dead upon the dead.
Mary beloved wife of George
also the above, beloved George.
Words entombed on mossbound rock
which cannot truly speak
the world of bones, hidden
in this tiny plot
or evoke the tenderness they grew.
Their mysteries held by century old keys:
The voices of those who knew them.
When it is time to lay my bones
plant no headstone, mark no tomb.
For I am beloved of the earth.
Plant for me a tree, so in a century
its trunk can be my legend,
its branches hold my mysteries
and the light on green leaves
can speak truly of the beyond.
Martin Collins
Wardsend at the World’s
End
No receptacles for flowers,
No flowers, but
Blackened stones like charred limbs
Twist through mud and moss.
Tiers of lurching headstones
Mark the damaged soldiers
of Christ.
Epitaphs speak the traditional woe
And hope for resurrection at a later date:
A bugler for the Light Brigade silenced;
Regimental honours- a Victory Cross
On a barracks’ burst blood-vessel, the martinet.
Victims from Sheffield Flood settled here
In the hillside when the waters receded,
A chapel-reader when the chapel is no more,
A baby snatched by God on Christmas day.
Among the fog-misshapen stone shrouds,
Isaac Howard, sexton and grave-robber,
Moves, tools in hand, to plunder.
He practises amateur dissection
On young bodies in his stable
And the stench from a gaping hole
Drives a woman to miscarry, or so she claims.
Sheffield loves to riot and here was cause
To burn a house and yard; to dig out graves
Where empty mouths gawp at empty coffins;
To bring out the dragoons to quell the wrath;
To rouse the wailings of bereavement
Unmediated by prayers.
Walkers beware! Memories last
Among three thousand graves
Clutched above the Don and sliced by rail
In the neglected margins of manufacture
And Nature’s sinewy roots.
His wife escaped the flames,
But did she know her husband’s secret deals?
Where is his broken body?
That flapping shred of cloth impaled on brambles
Is the last flag of his serge coat-tails
And, turning quickly on the slick-slime stone,
I catch a glimpse of a doughy face
And hear the thwack of spade on sod,
The mandrake shriek of metal saw
And the grinding winch lifting the lid
To find his dead ringer.
Ian Enters
Wire over water:
lines sinking to shadow, light
shifting the border.
Brian Lewis
We do not know the loss of children
No
panel doctor scribbled. ‘Emphysema’. ‘Drowned.’
Instead
she writhed in agony. This is not written down.
Coke
smothered in ‘12, or ’26 ? Coal tip lad all gone.
The
family suffered twice for this. No bloody coal. No son.
Blanketed
in bramble. For Job Broadhead we weep.
One
moment there. Another not. Perhaps he fell asleep ?
Bereaved
at the graveside stand, no shame.
And
step away, meek as they came.
We
do not know the loss of children. Who do cry foul, alone,
speechless
in their solitude, nerves stripped clean to bone
Instead
our elders live forever, our children never die
and
liquify the dark brown earth, or light up almighty Sky.
Brian Holmshaw
George Proctor representing Friends of Wardsend Cemetery at Art in the Park's Unregistered celebration
Keith Hayman and Simon Gedye, display board for RIBA's forogtten spaces competition (detail), courtesy Studio Gedye
The Unregistered
project was directly inspired by the work that artist Keith Hayman did with
architect Simon Gedye around Cuthbert Bank. Their project was shortlisted and then commended for RIBA's forgotten spaces award.
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